You Are What You Eat!

In the Catholic Times, a broadcaster in the Sunday Chat column tells us that we are what we eat. This proverb expresses how our food affects our health and quality of life. It is said to have originated from the saying: "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what kind of person you are," written in his book by the 19th-century French food scientist Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. 

We need to eat. Eating provides us with energy and various nutrients and is necessary to maintain our bodily functions, growth, recovery, and health. The process is just as important as eating itself. Emotions arising from eating with family or friends are also important and part of our culture.

Everyone enjoys eating delicious food; it relieves stress and provides psychological satisfaction. Popular broadcasts often talk about food as one of their topics.

The Korean language even has people eating many things that are not food. It is part of their idiomatic, figurative language, but that is also true in English, for we say 'eating one's heart out' and that something is 'gnawing away in me' when consumed by negative thinking and feeling— eaten up with jealousy.

The Korean language has us eating the 'years'; we are fed the years. Sometimes, it is said that one has eaten three or four years to their age at once and are 'old farts'.

Just as eating unhealthy food can harm your health, what the mind and heart 'eat' that is not healthy will hurt our health. It is said that books are food for the mind. He remembers the loving face of an old lady who was illiterate until age eighty and learned Hangul at a literacy school a few months ago and sang along with her hymns enthusiastically.

There is a saying that we 'grow old.' If you think about it carefully, isn't age something that we eat or that is fed to us? Eating is something that we do ourselves, based on our own needs and will, but age is something that we can't eat more if we want to, or not eat if we don't want to, so isn't it something that an invisible hand forces on us? 

There is another thing that we eat. When he was young, his parents used to tell him, 'Don't go around and do things that will cause you to eat insults from people. He didn't insult himself; others insulted him. Unfortunately, everyone has probably had several experiences where they had to eat insults against their will. Strictly speaking, this is something others feed me, not something one eats oneself. 

There are things that the Korean language permits you to eat. 'Eating food' and 'eating with the mind, heart, and spirit.' Usually, the mind 'eats' new plans and resolutions on New Year's Day; the mind can also eat with faith. Faith is about eating with the mind, heart, and spirit. It gives you comfort and hope in times of hardship and suffering and a positive mind that endures under challenging situations. It gives you a mind that thinks of your neighbors, holds the hand of those left behind, and runs side by side with them. It makes you realize the value of the world and that we must respect each other's differences and coexist.

Although the food that books talk about may be lacking, what is consumed wisely with a proper mind is never unpleasant; even if you eat a lot and are fat, it's beautiful. I will add a spoon to the above famous saying—

'Whether it's food or other things that are consumed in the manner of food, what is taken in makes you the person you are'.